SAVATAGE

SAVATAGE
Biography

Savatage are a heavy metal band begun in Florida by the brothers Jon and Criss Oliva. The band's own site places its founding in Tampa and lists Jon from 1978. They started out as Avatar and became Savatage just before their debut, Sirens, came out in 1983. From Hall of the Mountain King in 1987 they made eight records with the producer Paul O'Neill, bringing in quotations from classical music and the form of rock opera. They carried on after Criss was killed in 1993, and in 1995 "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)" became the starting point of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, in which the members went on to play. They stopped after their 2002 tour, reunited in 2015 and have been back on stage since 2025. They played Japan in 1992, 1994 and 1996, and the 1994 show in Kawasaki became their first live album.

Beginnings in Florida (1978-1984)

Jon Oliva was born in the Bronx, New York, on 22 July 1960, and the family moved to Dunedin, Florida, in 1976, according to Jon's profile on the old official site. His younger brother Criss was born on 3 April 1963, as the official site records. Jon has recalled playing five nights a week in a covers band called Metropolis, which made a single in 1978. The brothers then formed Avatar, which settled on a line-up with drummer Steve "Doc" Wacholz, who had met the brothers in 1977, and bassist Keith Collins, who joined in 1981. The old official timeline says Avatar built an underground following in Florida, and in 1982 gave two songs to a compilation LP from the Tampa radio station WYNF.

Dan Johnson of the local Par Records put out the band's single "City Beneath the Surface" and then paid for an album. Just before it went to the pressing plant, word came that a European band was already called Avatar and might sue. As Jon tells it, they wrote "Avatar" on a sheet of paper, added a big Kiss-style "S" at the front, then dropped the R and added "GE", and Savatage was the result. The debut Sirens came out in April 1983, and the rest of the songs from the same session became the EP The Dungeons Are Calling in 1984, with which Par completed the contract before letting the band go to Atlantic. The route there, Jon recalls, began with a night opening for Atlantic's Zebra at home in Florida, after which someone who saw the show brought Atlantic's Jason Flom down to see them.

The first two Atlantic records (1985-1986)

Power of the Night, the first Atlantic album, came out in 1985, produced by Max Norman, known for his work with Ozzy Osbourne, at Bearsville Studios in New York State. Bassist Keith Collins left after it and Johnny Lee Middleton joined. Fight for the Rock was recorded in London in 1986 and drew largely on songs Jon had written for other Atlantic artists; it reached number 158 on the Billboard 200. That year the band played American dates with Ted Nugent and Blue Öyster Cult and made their first European tour opening for Motörhead, as the old official timeline records.

Paul O'Neill (1987-1991)

The official site tells how, with Fight for the Rock having failed to connect and the band close to splitting up, Atlantic asked the producer Paul O'Neill to help. O'Neill flew to Florida to see them play and began writing with the Oliva brothers, and the result, Hall of the Mountain King in 1987, was the first of eight records they made together. "Prelude to Madness", built on Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King", was the band's first instrumental, and the title song's video was their first music video. The album climbed to number 116 on the Billboard 200, their best placing there. On the arena tour with Dio and Megadeth that followed, guitarist Chris Caffery joined as a touring member, and in 1988 the band guest-hosted MTV's Headbangers Ball, according to the old official timeline.

After that tour Jon went into rehab, and the songs he wrote there became the heart of Gutter Ballet in 1989. Its piano-led title song was written on the night Jon saw The Phantom of the Opera, and the title came from a rock opera O'Neill had written and set aside. The album reached number 124 on the Billboard 200 and number 47 in Germany, and the Rulin' Gutter tour that followed ran to more than a hundred shows across Europe and North America. The Los Angeles show of 29 June 1990 from that tour was released for the first time in 2026, as Madness Reigns From The Gutter (1990).

Streets: A Rock Opera in 1991 drew on O'Neill's rock opera, following a New York drug dealer who becomes a rock star, falls, and finds redemption. It came out days after Nirvana's Nevermind, struggled commercially, and its tour was cut short, as Guitar World recounts. With his voice failing, Jon stepped down as lead singer after a show in Tampa on 13 June 1992, according to the band's old tour history.

The death of Criss Oliva (1992-1994)

Jon stayed on to write and record, and helped Criss and O'Neill choose a new singer: Zak Stevens, who had sung in the Boston band Wicked Witch. The title song of Edge of Thorns in 1993 became the band's first hit on American rock radio, reaching number 26 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart.

Six months after that album came out, early on 17 October 1993, the car carrying Criss Oliva and his wife Dawn was hit head-on by a drunk driver trying to pass another vehicle. Criss died at the scene and Dawn was badly hurt. The couple were on their way to a music festival in Zephyrhills, Florida, according to a 1994 local newspaper report the old official site reprinted. He was thirty. "Shotgun Innocence", a bonus track on the Japanese edition of Edge of Thorns, was the last song he recorded, as the old official timeline notes.

The official site says Jon and O'Neill finished a song for Criss and decided that the best tribute was to keep the band going. Handful of Rain, which closes with that song, "Alone You Breathe", came out in August 1994, less than a year after Criss's death. Alex Skolnick of Testament played lead guitar, and the old official FAQ says Jon played most of the drums and bass himself. Jeff Plate, Zak's bandmate from Wicked Witch, became the drummer, and with Jon back on keyboards and vocals and Skolnick on guitar the band toured America and Japan. The last night of that tour, at Club Citta' in Kawasaki on 12 November, became their first live album, Japan Live '94, later called Live in Japan. Skolnick left on good terms in 1995, the official site says.

Into Trans-Siberian Orchestra (1995-2002)

For Dead Winter Dead in 1995, Chris Caffery came back and Al Pitrelli, who had played in Alice Cooper's band, joined, giving the band two guitarists. It is a rock opera set in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, and its instrumental "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)" unexpectedly began getting played on American radio over the 1995 holiday season. The official site calls it the band's biggest hit, one that soon outgrew Savatage itself. As Jon told Songfacts, the song sold about thirty thousand copies under the Savatage name, but released the following year under the name Trans-Siberian Orchestra, with a Christmas cover, it went to number one on some five hundred stations. So the members launched Trans-Siberian Orchestra, whose first album came out in 1996.

Ghost in the Ruins, a live album drawn from shows with Criss between 1987 and 1990, came out first in Japan, as Final Bell, in November 1995. The Wake of Magellan in 1997, made by the same line-up as the album before it, reached number 11 in Germany and number 44 on Japan's Oricon chart. When Pitrelli left for Megadeth in 2000 and Zak stepped down for family reasons, the band left Atlantic after fifteen years and released Poets and Madmen, with Jon singing every lead vocal, through SPV/Steamhammer in Europe and Nuclear Blast America in the United States in 2001. It reached number 7 in Germany, the band's best placing there for a new album. On tour Damond Jiniya sang Zak's parts, and on the European tour of summer 2002 Jeff Waters of Annihilator played guitar. After that the band went quiet for many years, and the members' work centred on Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

The return (2015 onwards)

On 30 July 2015 Savatage played their first official concert in thirteen years at Wacken Open Air: after separate sets by Savatage and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the two bands played the same songs at the same time on two neighbouring main stages for an hour, before more than eighty thousand people, as Blabbermouth reported. Paul O'Neill died in Tampa on 5 April 2017, at the age of sixty-one, as Variety reported.

In October 2024 Jon announced that he has multiple sclerosis and Ménière's disease and that he would not play the following year's shows but would stay involved with the band. On 19 April 2025 the band returned to the stage for the first time in ten years at Monsters of Rock in São Paulo, Brazil, with Zak Stevens, Al Pitrelli, Chris Caffery, Johnny Lee Middleton and Jeff Plate joined by two keyboard players; during "Believe" a film of Jon singing at the piano was shown. In 2026 they toured Europe as "Prelude To Madness", playing the amphitheatre of Pompeii in Italy with an orchestra on 27 July and Wacken Open Air on 30 July, and in June that year Madness Reigns From The Gutter (1990), their 1990 Los Angeles show, was released.

The members

The band's official site lists six current members: Jon Oliva (lead vocals, keyboards, rhythm guitars, bass and drums, since 1978), Johnny Lee Middleton (bass, since 1986), Chris Caffery (guitar, since 1987), Zak Stevens (lead vocals, 1992-2000 and since 2014), Jeff Plate (drums, since 1994) and Al Pitrelli (guitar, 1995-1999 and since 2002), and it lists Criss Oliva (3 April 1963 - 17 October 1993) as "With Us Forever". Past members named there are drummer Steve "Doc" Wacholz, bassist Keith Collins and guitarist Alex Skolnick.

Discography

The eleven studio albums, the EP and the three live albums on the band's own discography page, in the order they first came out. Each has its own page with the running order, CD details, liner notes and official videos. Where the date is the Japanese edition's, Japan was where the record came out first.

Released	Title	Label
11 April 1983	Sirens	Par Records
March 1984	The Dungeons Are Calling (EP)	Par Records
April 1985	Power of the Night	Atlantic
April 1986	Fight for the Rock	Atlantic
1987	Hall of the Mountain King	Atlantic
December 1989	Gutter Ballet	Atlantic
15 October 1991	Streets: A Rock Opera	Atlantic
6 April 1993	Edge of Thorns	Atlantic
10 August 1994	Handful of Rain	Zero Corporation (Japan) / Atlantic
25 January 1995	Live in Japan (live album; Japan Live '94 in Japan)	Zero Corporation
20 September 1995	Dead Winter Dead	Zero Corporation (Japan) / Atlantic
22 November 1995	Ghost in the Ruins - A Tribute to Criss Oliva (live album; Final Bell in Japan)	Zero Corporation
3 September 1997	The Wake of Magellan	Victor Entertainment (Japan) / Atlantic
March 2001	Poets and Madmen	SPV/Steamhammer, Nuclear Blast America
26 June 2026	Madness Reigns From The Gutter (1990) (live album)	earMUSIC

Concerts in Japan

The band played Japan three times, in 1992, 1994 and 1996, according to their tour history of the time. On the first visit, in March 1992, they played Kawasaki on the 12th and opened for Yngwie Malmsteen in Tokyo on the 14th. In 2013 Jon Oliva named that support slot as his fondest memory of his brother: after a cool reception backstage, Criss stretched his short guitar solo on "City Beneath the Surface" to about two minutes, as BraveWords reported. November 1994 closed the Handful of Rain tour, and its last night, at Club Citta' in Kawasaki, became the first live album, Japan Live '94. Alex Skolnick has recalled four shows in Japan that time, and a crowd on the last night livelier than any he had seen there, as Blabbermouth reported. In June 1996 the Dead Winter Dead tour took the band to Tokyo and Kawasaki. The tour history gives only the city of each night, so the hall is known only for Kawasaki in 1994. The band's 2025 and 2026 tours included no Japanese dates.

Date	Venue	Event
12 March 1992	Kawasaki (Kanagawa)	First visit to Japan
14 March 1992	Tokyo	Opening for Yngwie Malmsteen
12 November 1994	Club Citta' Kawasaki (Kanagawa)	Last night of the 1994 tour; released as Japan Live '94
14 June 1996	Tokyo	Dead Winter Dead tour
15 June 1996	Kawasaki (Kanagawa)	Dead Winter Dead tour

About the sources

This page is based on the band's official site, savatage.com (About, The Savatage Story, the discography and each album's page, the videos, the tour and the news); the old official site as the Internet Archive kept it (Clay Marshall's timeline, the FAQ, the tour history, the news, the press releases and Jon Oliva's profile); the album pages of earMUSIC, King Records, Warner Music Japan and Victor Entertainment; Tower Records, CDJournal and Oricon's product data; Billboard's chart records; the official German chart; Blabbermouth.net, Louder (Prog and Metal Hammer), Guitar World, Songfacts, Variety, the Associated Press, the Tampa Bay Times, BraveWords, AllMusic and Rock Hard; MusicBrainz; and Wikidata. The English and Japanese Wikipedia were used only as a starting point, and every fact taken from them was checked against one of these sources. The Japanese editions' dates and catalogue numbers are on each album's page.